#Instafood: a speculative design exploration of the eating experience, perception, fabrication, and consumption.
The discussion of dietary nutrition and the pursuit of satisfaction in eating experience has consistently attracted significant attention. While advanced technologies have been dedicated to providing solutions in these fields, the challenge of increasingly complex and diverse dietary needs requires more innovative approaches. Grounded in speculative design, this study introduces InstaFood, an approach to personalized eating for well-being. It speculates a future possibility of influencing intake by manipulating food-related visual cues, through a combination of perceptual impacts, social media image-based investigations, and digital fabrication. Research on crossmodal perception in psychology establishes a theoretical framework that links visual characteristics to food perception, demonstrating that not only food itself but its plating and containers can also influence perception and consumption. This offers valuable insights into modifying food-related visual cues to influence intake. The prevalence of culinary photos on social media presents a unique opportunity to observe these visual cues in daily diet and gain a deeper understanding of individual eating habits, to inform a personalised eating experience and diet. Finally, digital fabrication technology enables the precise alteration and customization of both food and plateware, both recipe and presentation. This supports the implementation and achievement of personalized eating for well-being. The speculation of InstaFood broadens the vision from simply imagining future food to redefining the entire food process and eating experience. This evolution moves beyond personalized nutrition, incorporating personalized perception and experience. Additionally, it contributes to investigation methodology by incorporating image-based analysis via social media to study individual dietary habits and daily food presentation. This study also opens up a new possibility for the future development of digital fabrication, enriching its attributes of personalized production in future everyday eating context. The new process from food production and preparation to consumption triggered by digital fabrication will also promote the formation of new relationships and interactions between food, humans and digital technologies.
Speculative Design, Future Eating, Digital Fabrication, Food Perception, Visual Cues, Social Media
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